Underwater Rodeo: Saga of a Deep Sea Diver
by
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The canvas, lining the hood of the yellow Helly Hansen foul weather slicker, the place where he always pulled on it to shield his eyes from the icy stabbing rain, had long since become a grimy smudge. The slicker and his bib overalls, new three months ago, now wore the stained, scuffed, salt crusted look of a deck hand's working gear. This one spot though, was exactly at eye level. The grimy smudge spoke mutely to him, reminding him how much he needed it for his survival while working the pitching deck of a fishing boat out at sea. At times, after hours of brain numbing work, the smudge would give him comfort like a familiar old friend. He glanced quickly at the cheap, but reliable, Casio watch on his left wrist. The smeared quartz face read 02:00. "D**n!" he muttered. The rising wind whirled the word out of his mouth and the sleet shattered it into a microcosm of resonance fragmented over the frigid brutal waves of the ice blue sea. He flexed his cold stiff fingers trying to bring more blood and warmth to his slow responding hands. Another arctic wave smashed into the port side of the Wizard's bow. It sent him stumbling over the crab pot netting, lurching to his right. This was the last string of king crab pots left to load, then he, the rest of the crew, and the Wizard would be through for the season. It was mid-November, the Bering Sea was a nasty bitter place to have to work. Only thirty more pots, only three more hours in this fuckin’ weather, he thought grimly to himself. He stood on a stack of 140 king crab pots, forty feet above the main deck. His job was "King of the Mountain". The first level of the big pots, 7 x 7 x 3 feet, had been muscled into position on their end side, tied down, and occupied most of the surface of the Wizard's long wood-planked deck. The following pots were laid pancake style and built, row by row, into a large, flat-topped metal mountain. The framework of the pots was two-inch metal rebar, with crossbars on the two flat sides. Inside the metal framework was the pot’s netting, the cage. Leading into the center of the netting, from two sides, were the ‘tunnels’ that the crab would scuttle into to reach the perforated bait jars that hung in the middle of the pot. The king crab would climb into the tunnel, drop over the lip, and fall to the floor of the pot. The pot of no return.
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About the Book
At times, a man's existence must survive on the blade-thin edge of danger. Voyage with Cole Cronan, as he seeks freedom from the straitjacket of society, living on the fringe of society's outposts. From king crab fishing the brutal icy waters of the Bering Sea, where Death's screeching howl informs him it's time to leave, to the warm seductive currents of the South China Sea working in the hazardous profession of the hard-living, pushing the envelope, commercial deep sea divers. His adventure roams from a steaming jungle river in a dugout canoe traveling to a Iban longhouse, former head hunters of Borneo; flying to Portsmouth England in the dead of winter for diving in the bitterly cold North Sea; to living at the paint peeling former colonial mansion known as the Mitre Hotel, home to a wide assortment of the diving industries rogues and roustabouts in Singapore. This course leads to the treacherous full moon tides and murky waters off Bombay, in the Arabian Sea. Cronan will test the core of his existence to survive a date with destiny - a stranded saturation diving bell--300 feet underwater.
About the Author
The author has lived the professions of both king crab deck hand working in the Bering Sea and commercial deep sea diver working out of Singapore. He and his wife live on the Pacific coast of southern Oregon.